This invention relates to systems and apparatus for treating sludge and more particularly to systems and apparatus for treating sludge of the type containing volatiles and a high percentage of water.
Large industrial complexes generate huge quantities of sludge material in the course of their normal day-to-day operations. One example of such sluge is the disposal material resulting from the painting process in automotive assembly facilities. This sludge contains volatile organic compounds and includes water used in the scrubbing operation in the paint spray booth and constituting as much as 90% by volume of the sludge material exiting from the painting operation. This sludge cannot be deposited into the normal sewage facilities but rather must be transported to a landfill. Typically the sludge is mixed with a soda ash before or after transport to the landfill to make it suitable for deposit at the landfill. This total disposal process, involving treating of the sludge and transportation of the sludge, sometimes over long distances, to a suitable landfill is extremely expensive. Further, landfill facilities are becoming increasingly scarce and the ecological requirements for depositing materials in the landfills are becoming more and more stringent. Various proposals have been made to make the sludge disposal process simpler and less expensive but these proposals have not met with any significant degree of commercial success since they have either been ineffective in reducing the complexity and cost of the sludge disposal process, have involved investments in space and capital equipment that have rendered the overall process unattractive from an economical standpoint or have resulted in a final product that is ecologically unacceptable at the landfill facilities.